If you are prioritizing charitable giving in your estate plan, you may want to consider using something called a donor-advised fund (DAF) which has become more popular in recent years. The value of DAF grants made to qualified charitable organizations increased 9% to $52.16 billion in 2022, and the number…
Using a trust as part of your estate plan can be beneficial in a number of ways, including maximizing tax code provisions to shield assets from gift and estate taxes, protecting assets from creditors or ex-spouses, or helping heirs be more responsible with their inheritance. Revocable living trusts can be…
In the last post, I began writing about including care for your pet as part of your estate plan. One option for doing this is to establish a pet trust. A pet trust is a type of trust established for the care of one or more animals that outlive their…
If someone close to you passes away and you receive the information that they had named you as trustee, you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed if you do not know what is needed to fulfill this role and if you have not served as a trustee before. Serving as a…
How you title your real estate holdings is key to making sure your assets are transferred according to your wishes after you have passed away. In making decisions about how to title your assets, you’ll want to consider things such as avoiding probate, minimizing estate taxes, and liability protection. Avoiding…
A trust is a legal document that you can use to give assets to others. A trust can be revocable or irrevocable. As the creator of the trust, you can modify a revocable trust at any point throughout your lifetime. If you decide on an irrevocable trust, though, you generally…
Last week I started writing about moving trusts from one state to another. In today’s post, I’ll share a few more things to consider if you are moving from one state to another, including the way states may treat marital property differently. States Treat Marital Property Differently Although most states…
If you have a revocable living trust and decide to move from one state to another, your trust should remain valid in your new state. Though the validity of this trust won’t be affected, you might want to make some changes to it since different states can have different laws…
Although we may think of phishing emails, robocalls, or other types of scams when we think about financial exploitation, it is far more common for this type of exploitation to be done by relatives, caregivers, neighbors, or friends someone believed they could trust. Financial exploitation is more common than most…
A lot of people are part of a blended family. It’s important for those in this type of family to make sure that stepchildren are incorporated into their estate planning process. Many stepparents love and care for their stepchildren as their own children, and they may not be aware that…